


We Will Rock You

by diefiend



Series: Queen [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1777438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefiend/pseuds/diefiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley and Aziraphale go to a hockey game. For some reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will Rock You

**Author's Note:**

> Just a blip. I wrote it during exams as a break from studying, but I'm not very happy with it. Characterization is crap—I barely recognize these two—but I think the idea is good. There's tonnes of fics about Aziraphale and Crowley after the Apocalypse that Didn't Happen, and the state of their respective jobs is not entirely clear when the book ends. Many writers assume that they're jobless. I agree. And although I'm sure they continued on as they did before— doing dinner and getting drunk together—it's fun to think about the things that neither one of them would really have any interest in. Hockey, for instance. 
> 
> And anyone who watches hockey, I'm sure they'll understand why I chose this song for this drabble. Thanks for reading.

Crowley didn’t surprise easily. Eons on the mortal plane, the thousands and thousands of years on Earth, watching the ludicrous play called humanity waltz across the rock... he’d seen a lot, really. In fact, there really wasn’t much that he hadn’t seen. His previous employment and experience helped this, as a typical day required him to be present and accounted for in the extremes—to turn those solitary minutes of clarity into ignorance, the holy into the blasphemous, Good into Evil. His job had require him turn to black those moments of the profound, turn to ash the understanding of the Universe and the One, if anyone could be said to understand it at all: to be there in the blinding brilliance and Presence, and the darkest and blackest-colored of them.

And then, there was this.

Somehow, against every ingrained iota of what instinct he had, and against every shred of common sense and decency he had ever learned on Earth, he said yes. Somehow, he said yes.

He only wished he had the foresight to bring a cushion for his frigid (and getting colder still) behind.

Another player got knocked headlong into the boards—stick flung out into the air, face in full contact with the plastic barrier—before he slid down and became acquainted with the ice in a way that normal human beings tend to avoid.

“That’s BULLSHIT.” The women two seats away from Crowley boomed. The woman two seats away from Crowley said this freely and frequently, in varying tone, volume, and emphasis, regardless of the two small children flanking either side of her. Crowley counted this particular utterance the ninth in the course of one 20 minute period. Being a being as meticulous as himself, he slotted it under the ‘Breaking 20 decibels’ category of his mental inventory. “That fucking SANTORELLI should be PULLED FROM THE GAME. This is BULLSHIT.”

Somehow, Aziraphale seemed immune to the rankling and catcalling, and the general atmosphere of unbridled violence of the players and indignation and wrath of the crowd. He ate his snacks happily, cheering the home team beside Crowley, yelling through a mouth stuffed with fois gras on crackers, jam scones, tarts, and quarter sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Crowley had refused the snacks out of principle and because Aziraphale had brought them in large and tasteless wicker basket, hefting the ugly and awkward thing without an ounce of suave, shoving his now-doubled size through the crowd and knocking heads with the corners as they filed down the aisle and to their seats. The angel was a cramp in his style, in the most total and complete definition of the phrase. Yet here he was. 

Crowley looked over at the basket again, packed with too much care and too much consideration—a wine that sent his mouth to water, prosciutto and brie and mini toasted bagels with lox, despite the angel’s partiality to gravlax and his distaste for fish any other way. 

Aziraphale must have caught him eyeing because suddenly there was the press of something soft into his palm. Crowley ignored him. Then took a bite of the cucumber sandwich. Of course, it was delicious. 

The referee blew his whistle, and Crowley watched to see exactly what had happened. A player skated off to the side, and a door in the boards open, and he walked in and sat down. 

“What was that.”

Aziraphale leaned over. “What was what?”

“The man. It went into that little cubical there.”

“High sticking.”

Crowley frowned. “High sticking?”

“Yes.”

The angel managed to finish off half an egg salad sandwich and a tart before he realized that Crowley was still staring across the ice at the man.

Aziraphale patted his arm. “It’s a penalty, my dear. Against the rules.”

Crowley sniffed. “Well, they are playing with sticks. But I suppose the refs need something to do.” He crossed one leg over the other, and felt the angel smiling for some reason.

“What.” Crowley asked.

“I wasn’t sure you’d know what they were.” 

“What who was?” Crowley looked over. The angel was beaming. 

“The referees. I’m surprised.”

Crowley wrapped his arms around his chest. “Obviously. Sports have always needed referees. Just look at the Colosseum. I mean, they might’ve been Christians, but there must be a line somewhere.”

Aziraphale’s face turned stormy. “Indeed.”

“I mean, it wouldn’t have been a very _Chris_ —”

“Crowley.”

A long horn blared, and Crowley watched the players come off the ice, through the box, and into a hall, where they disappeared. 

“What are they doing now?” He asked. The ice was empty, and humans were getting up. “Is it over? Thank Someone.” He stood up and adjusted his coat, and Aziraphale stood with him. When they got out the doors of the rink itself, however, Aziraphale took a left instead of a right out onto the street. 

“Where are you going?”

Aziraphale made a plaintive noise. “My dear. They have caramel corn.”

Crowley followed and scoffed at the line in front of the concession stand: it parted like a famous sea. “Come off it, angel.” He said, as a preemptive assumption of Aziraphale’s reaction, but he needn’t have bothered: the angel sidled up to the counter like he owned the place, ordering not only caramel corn but also licorice whips, strawberry marshmallows, and two cups of bitter and weak coffee. 

“Forgot that in your basket, did you?” Crowley asked, shuddering through his first sip. 

Aziraphale ignored him, until he realized he was short £2.50 for the lot and had to ask Crowley for the rest, who gave it over with only a roll of his eyes.

Then they were right back where they started.

There was a large machine, like a car, driving over the ice. Every time it turned, the back of it seemed to fishtail out. Crowley could only stare at it, and hold his terrible coffee.

“I thought it was over.”

The angel was already well into the caramel corn and simultaneously working on a tart. “Over? No, there’s still two more periods.”

Crowley frowned, sat down, and frowned even more. Just as cold as he left it. “Well, where the bloody somewhere are they?”

“Change rooms.”

“Change rooms...”

“Yes. You know.” Aziraphale waved his hand in the air. “For a little huddle.”

“Huddle.” Crowley said, because apparently he was getting very good at repeating things. 

“Here, look.” 

Off to the side of them, the players were back in the box and then back on the ice, gliding around and settling into some rudimentary form called ‘face off’. The crowd started nattering and catcalling. Aziraphale was fixed, literally and figuratively to the game: the end of the world wouldn’t have moved him.

Crowley sighed and blinked. A soft, warm cushion appeared beneath him, and a luxurious red satin scarf wound its way around his throat. The coffee turned into dark roast Arabica, hand ground from the shop down the street, and had acquired a healthy dose of Baileys liqueur. Aziraphale stared at him like he’d just kicked a puppy while helping an old lady across the street. The demon gave an exaggerated sigh and Aziraphale’s coffee got the same treatment. 

The ball (“No, it’s called a puck. Balls are round. A puck is more like a... well, a patty, I suppose.”) went bouncing off to one side of the rink. Something was amiss. He looked to the other side of the ice, and back again.

“They switched.”

“What?”

Crowley pointed. “The goal people. They switched. The red was over there the last time. Now it’s over there.”

“They switch each period.”

“Why?”

Aziraphale shrugged in a way that sounded like ‘I don’t know, shut up please’, so Crowley leaned back and watched.

Humans were not entirely interesting animals. Or maybe it was because Crowley had seen them, in and out, for longer than he cared to think of. The stomping and the cheering, and the boos and yelling felt frivolous and annoying to Crowley, but Aziraphale ate it up as fast as he plowed through his giant basket of treats. His gray eyes were lit up and sharp, and they followed the puck and the players intensely, and Crowley wondered for one brief and crazy moment why Aziraphale never looked at him like that: with that kind of interest and sharp intelligence. The most he got out of him was either exasperation, a Holier-than-Holies-complex, or his default state of being: the dither. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, anymore. The End that was supposed to happen hadn’t actually happened, and Crowley and Aziraphale had left Tadfield with a stolen Jeep and borrowed time. When they had to give it back was unclear, it seemed, not only to themselves but also from the people that would be wanting it, but both Heaven and Hell had remained mysteriously absent in the last several weeks of tedium and fear and so both angel and demon had been exercising their freedoms to the absolute point of it. This not only included hockey games, or bar nights, or concerts, or thrill-seeking (for the exception of base-jumping or sky-diving; it was difficult to keep wings reigned in when you were falling from such heights), but also long nights and bottomless bottles, of course, where Aziraphale’s stare would slip into a gaze that was much softer—and admittedly much more interesting—than his usual humor. It made Crowley think about things that he probably shouldn’t be thinking about. Like joined apartments, and dinner dates. And skin. And whether or not the angel had ever made the effort, and if he hadn’t, if he could possibly be persuaded to. 

Beside him, Aziraphale was muttering in Arabic, something about dog sons and snakes. Crowley nudged him with an elbow. “What’s that about?” He asks around a grin.

Aziraphale waved his hand. “That was an illegal move, and the referee didn’t call it.”

Crowley watched Aziraphale watching the ice. Then he moved his finger. The referee’s skate came out from under him; he fell, and landed right on his ass. 

“Crowley...”

“In a minute, angel.”

The words were barely out of his mouth, when the puck—in a complete dis to the laws of physics—swung from it’s path along the ice in a wide (but not too wide) arc, straight into the referee’s mouth. The man went down again. Crowley smiled at the spray of blood decorating the blue line. 

“Really, my dear...” Aziraphale said. But there was a smile in it.

Crowley grinned wider and took a mini bagel with lox from the angel’s hoard. He could almost taste Aziraphale satisfaction in the air.

The players kept on playing, though the ref was being helped out of the game. Someone scored. The horns went off. The music came on, loud, and barely discernible over the screaming and cheering. 

Barely discernible, but Crowley could hear it. 

He frowned, squinting.

“... I know this song...”


End file.
